The water surges around my waist, pulling and tugging at me. I press against it, my legs burning, breath rasping in my chest as I reach forward through the tumult.

Just a bit further!

Pain rages, dull and constant, but I file it to the back of my mind and lunge forward, catching the metal bar at the end of the little pool. The jets of water cease immediately, and I hang my head as my lungs heave.

“Well done, Rose!” Taylor, my physio, says proudly. She kneels down by the bar I’m hanging onto for dear life. “Now, you’d tell me if that was too tough for you, right? No pain in the leg?”

I open my mouth to respond, but my mother beats me to it. “It hurt her. And she’s about to try to tell you it didn’t.”

I frown at her as Taylor turns back to me, a disappointed crease between her eyebrows. “I can’t help you recover from this if you won’t tell me when it’s too much, Rose.”

“It’s taking too long,” I manage between breaths. “I thought we’d be further along by now.”

“It’s been eight weeks,” she corrects, offering a hand to help me out. “And you can’t rush this kind of healing. We’ve talked about this.”

I let her haul me from the pool, feeling ten times heavier than usual. Mum is there in an instant with a towel, but I take a moment to look at the offending leg that has landed me in very expensive hydrotherapy for two months. It’s pale and soft from time in the warm water, but the calf muscle is gnarled with scar tissue and black threads. Taylor had queried if it was some kind of bruising when I’d first met her. I couldn’t tell her it was the remnants of my own armour.

The clawed mace that had taken out a chunk of my dominant leg had very nearly killed me. I flex my fingers as the memories surge back like the water in the pool; Petre’s lifeless body, the screaming man in my grasp, and flames… 

Everything ablaze. 

Though the scars on my forearms and face barely show under the fluorescent lights of the gym, the ones on my back show better. Mum always covers me up before the other trainers and members can get a look at them, but I remember Taylor’s stuttered sentence when she helped me into the pool the first time. I feel the heat in my face grow as, even now, she avoids looking at me. I pull the towel tight around my shoulders and accept my mother’s help towards the change rooms.

***

“You did really well today,” Mum says as we pull into the driveway.

I say nothing, waiting for the follow up. It doesn’t come, and as she switches off the ignition, she meets my look. 

“What?”

“I’m waiting for the ‘but’,” I reply. “‘You did well, but…’”

“No ‘but’. I just thought you did very well for today’s session.”

“Oh.” I take a moment and let that sink in. “Thanks.”

“Do you need a hand getting out?”

I wriggle the toes of my right leg. The numbness has set in and I’m going to need to stretch to get any kind of movement out of the limb. “Yes, please.”

Mum comes around the passenger side of the car with my cane and her work bag, and helps me out with one hand, offering the stick with the other. I take it like I would the hand of my oldest friend, the grip comfortable and worn. I lost my old one when Arno picked me from the cobblestones of Fairhaven, broken and bleeding. Sometimes I remember it lying there as he carried me away and get inexplicably sad; the cane had been made for me by a man in Riverdoor, just after the death of my friend. I had lost my leg, and Petre, and received the cane in return. It felt wrong to abandon it to the fire of the village that I—

“Rose.” Fingers snap under my nose. “You’re doing it again.”

I take a deep breath, returning to the present. “Sorry.”

She plants her hand on my head for a second like she’s going to say something, but then takes my gym bag along with hers and follows me up to the house, scaring a family of nesting birds from the eaves. I’m breathing heavily as I step over the threshold, but manage to kick my shoes off as Mum scuffs hers clean on the rug.

“Go sit down, I’ll bring food,” she promises, dumping both bags beside the shoe stand. 

I watch her go for a second, then my gaze drifts up the stairs that may as well be Mt Everest in my hallway. Warm sunlight gleams from my open bedroom door at the top. I rest a hand on the bannister.

Then I curl my fingers and let my hand drop. It has been weeks since I’ve set foot in my own room. The smell of sawdust and wood glue stands testimony to Mum’s efforts in between shifts as a travelling locum doctor to renovate the garage, so I have a bedroom on the ground floor. For now, I’ve turned the couch into a nest, complete with laptop and PlayStation. I hobble there now, falling gratefully into the worn cushions and picking up my laptop. I navigate to YouTube as I hear the microwave start up, then cast the videos to the big TV as Mum pokes her head in.

“Steak and mashed potatoes?”

“Yes, please. What do you want to watch?”

She looks aside, but then presses her lips together and smiles easily at me. “Anything but those miserable compilation videos.”

I clench my jaw for a second, but manage to respond. “What about the dude making huts in the bush?”

“Oh yes, I like him.”

I turn back to the TV and go to click on the thumbnail, but another catches my eye; an upload I’ve been waiting for. My stomach swoops as I’m faced with my own picture from the day I returned, bloody and hollow-eyed.

Top Five Mysterious Missing People Who Were Found reads the title. 

I drum my nails on the laptop, then add to ‘Watch Later’. 

‘Miserable compilations’ indeed.

***

“I found another.”

“Stop looking for them.”

I pull apart the Crispy Burger bun and avoid Tyson’s gaze. “I don’t go looking for them. YouTube recommends them.”

“Because you went looking for them.”

A loud horn sound in the distance, giving warning to the long train that curls around the corner and rattles along the tracks behind the chain link fence. We watch it from the warmth of Tyson’s car, burger wrappings in our laps. I toy with my burger, knowing Tyson is eyeing it.

“How’d therapy go yesterday? Good swim?”

“It was good. She pushes me.”

“Any progress on… on the… you know…”

I raise an eyebrow and look at him. “On the walking thing? No. I’m still Sticks McGee.” I nudge my cane down the side of the passenger seat.

“I’m sorry.”

I shrug, pulling the meat patty out of the bun. Tyson makes a pained noise. I wield the patty at him. “Calm down. Even this is a bit much for me.”

“You still got the weird food thing?”

I nod and take a bite of the patty. Thanks to the magical blood in my veins, my body believes I should be existing off of unprocessed wholefoods. Which, in this day and age of adding sugar to literally everything, makes finding food I can eat quite difficult.

“Even the bun has sugar in it,” I say through the meat. “The bun, Tyson.”

He takes it from me. “That’s what makes it so good.”

Another train rattles past as we lapse into silence. One of the carriages lumbers past, covered in bright swirls of spray paint that just says ‘Graffiti’.

“Well that’s a bit meta,” I say.

He exhale-laughs, and I know what’s coming. I slide down into my seat and push my head into the headrest.

“You can’t keep watching those videos about us, Rose.”

“Why not?”

Tyson balls up the burger wrapper and ditches it into the bag. “Because it’s not healthy. We’ve moved on. We’re back. We need to live in this world now.”

There’s something in his voice, but I turn my head away, looking out the window at the stars. Different stars shone in Lotheria; somewhere back there I had a book with all the constellations.

“Take up a hobby. One that isn’t physiotherapy. Go back to school, get a job… something, Rose. You can’t keep living back there. I need you here, Rose. I—”

“The video today,” I begin, “the newest one… it called us ‘victims’. His theory is that we were victims of human trafficking and managed to escape.”

Tyson leans into the driver’s side door, as though to get a better look at me. I avoid his gaze.

“We were victims,” he says.

“You might’ve been.” I pull one of my sleeves up, revealing the marble white rune scars I put on my forearms myself. “But I wasn’t.”

He looks away. “Kaya forced you to do that.”

I let my sleeve go, covering the scars again. “She didn’t force me to collude with her. I was the one that went seeking her out, I was the one that let her into the town, I—”

His hand catches mine as my chest heaves. 

“Stop,” he says firmly. “It wasn’t your fault what happened there. You need to let it go.”

I press my lips together. “How can you say that? Don’t you want to know if they’re alright? Craige, Arno… Amisha?”

Laela.

Her name goes unspoken between us. The fate I left her to is too much for us to discuss in a dark car over burger wrappings. Tears burn in my eyes as I look away. 

“I know you loved her—”

I shake my head fiercely. “I don’t know what I felt for her. I don’t think I’m capable of love.” I turn back to him as a rebellious tear streaks down my cheek. “Would someone that loved her leave her there to the Halvers?”

His grip tightens on my hand. “It’s not your fault.”

“Yeah,” I whisper. “It is.”